Missing Flappy Bird? More Weird New Ways You Can Get Your Flap On

The buzz continues around Flappy Bird, Dong Nguyen’s scary addictive side-scrolling bird flapping game. The developer pulled the wildly successful app from both iOS and Android App Stores on Sunday, citing the fact that his game was too addictive. There are mobile devices out there on eBay and Craigslist for outrageous prices, and everyone seems to want to talk about the retro-inspired flap-fest.

While many of us have Flappy Bird still installed on our phones, it’s possible many folks didn’t get to the party until now.

Terry Cavanagh, an indie dev with his own brutally addictive successes Super Hexagon and VVVVVV, whipped up a quick techno-infused “Flappy Bird Fan Game” over at his website. Calling it Maverick Bird, Cavanagh has taken the Flappy Bird gameplay and added his own special audio-visual style. Just like the original Flappy Bird, you’ll need to dodge vertical obstacles that seem randomly generated just to keep you from progressing forward. Instead of a cute little Nintendo-style bird, you’ll control an adorable diamond sprite. In Maverick Bird, you’ll dive up with the up arrow and down with the down arrow, an added control that Flappy Bird does not have.

Perhaps an even odder Flappy Bird homage is FlapMMO. Using the spacebar to flap your way through the same visual landscape as the original game, the FlapMMO places you onscreen with dozens of other little flapping avians. You can name your own birdie, and then share the joy of watching everyone else try to get through the first two pipes. Ugh. The graphics are similar, of course, but the collision detection when you hit the pipe or ground, is very basic, so don’t expect to spend too much time here. It’s a fun diversion, though, while it lasts.

Other notable weird Flappy Bird games include MegaFlap, which is the same side-scrolling mechanic but with MegaMan sprites, Floculus Bird, a 3D, Oculus-Rift virtual reality version from the perspective of the bird, and FlappyBalt, a Flappy-homage from Canabalt’s own Adam Saltzman.

All of these flapping games, except FlapMMO, were created as part of the Flappy Jam, an indie-led event happening through February 24 to support Nguyen. The website says, “Indie gamedevs are friendly and supportive, envy and teasing should not belong to our community, nor be a cause of suffering.”

About the author:

Rob LeFebvre is an Anchorage, Alaska-based writer and editor who has contributed to various tech, gaming and iOS sites, including 148Apps, Creative Screenwriting, Shelf-Awareness, VentureBeat, and Paste Magazine. Feel free to find Rob on Twitter @roblef, and send him a cookie once in a while; he'll really appreciate it.